<?php
/**
 * <https://y.st./>
 * Copyright © 2017 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>
 * 
 * This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
 * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 * the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
 * (at your option) any later version.
 * 
 * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
 * GNU General Public License for more details.
 * 
 * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 * along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org./licenses/>.
**/

$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'My weblog: Also known as a story full of redactions',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<section id="general">
	<h2>General news</h2>
	<p>
		My <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> still sings the tune of freedom and transparency.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="university">
	<h2>University life</h2>
	<p>
		Lovely.
		Someone plagiarised my work, but now <strong>*I&apos;m*</strong> the one in trouble.
		They&apos;ve told me I may face retroactive failure of coursework and/or expulsion from the school unless I remove the work from my website.
		I would take it down temporarily and put it back up as soon as I graduate, in defiance of the school, but the take-down letter included this:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Under no circumstances are students allowed to publicly share (for example on blogs, websites, social media, databases) their work completed at or for University of <span class="redacted">[REDACTED]</span> until two calendar years from the end of the student’s final term of study.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<p>
		Two calendar years from the time I graduate.
		The university has set an expiration for their own take down request, so I&apos;ll abide by it to the letter.
		I will not be permanently censored, but I can wait an extra two or three years to show what I&apos;ve been working on.
		I&apos;ve taken down everything in the <code>/en/coursework/</code> section, and I spent the morning and into the afternoon going through my journal to find the pages I needed to redact from that.
		Upon first reading <a href="/en/take-down/2017-11-01.xhtml">their letter</a>, I didn&apos;t realise that the two-calendar-year thing was a part of the code of conduct.
		The spewed the full code of conduct at me instead of pointing me to what they were actually accusing me of violating.
		I thought I&apos;d had no way to know about this rule, but it was actually in the code of conduct all along.
		I was indeed in the wrong.
		Well, sort of.
		This is still censorship, so it&apos;s still the school in the wrong, but this was technically a rule I agreed to abide by.
	</p>
	<p>
		Between the emotional effects of the take-down notice and the hours of tediousness that complying took, I just don&apos;t have the energy to put into my learning journal assignments today.
		I&apos;d planned to finish and submit them today, but checking the deadline, I have tomorrow to do it as well.
		I&apos;ll just be sure to get both my final exams completed and the learning journal entries completed.
		It wasn&apos;t until late in the day that I realised that I&apos;d honestly violated any actual rule, so I was still reeling from what I thought the school had dropped on me without warning.
		I did get the grading done for the remaining three essays I needed to get done today though.
		Honestly, if I&apos;d known the grading criteria was so simple, I wouldn&apos;t have put it off; I&apos;d&apos;ve graded these essays when I graded the screenshots from the other course.
		Speaking of screenshots, that&apos;s basically all we graded for on this essay.
		Did the student provide the required screenshot?
		Yes?
		Then they pass.
		A few other things were checked for, such as the presence of a title page and references section, but none of the content of the essay was to be graded aside from a basic question of whether it looks like the student&apos;s own work or not.
		And unless you recognise it as the work of someone specific, how are you going to know if it was the student&apos;s own work?
		Don&apos;t get me wrong, I read the essays in their entirety.
		They were all short, as there wasn&apos;t much to talk about unless you went above and beyond like I did.
	</p>
	<p>
		I had to get the course evaluations handed in today.
		These are not graded and are just our way of providing feedback to the school about the courses, so they should be safe to quote here:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Most of this course was great, and I learned a lot.
			However, two of the assignments arbitrarily required specific Windows software to run.
			This software was used to retrieve information about our systems, but that information could have been gotten from other software as well, and in fact, in my submissions, I got the information both from the required software and from alternative software, as a demonstration.
			University of <span class="redacted">[REDACTED]</span>&apos;s mission, supposedly, is to make education affordable to and accessible by the masses.
			However, not all of us have Windows computers.
			Not all of us can *afford* a copy of Windows! The only reason I was able to use the required software is because a fellow student lent me a remote, virtual Windows installation, which I ran the programs required on.
			However, these programs should never have been requirements at all! One program, Process Explorer, we used to look at memory usage.
			Had the assignment suggested (but not required) Process Explorer, those of us on alternative operating systems could have gotten that same information about our memory usage using other applications.
			The other assignment had us use NTFSInfo to look at data clusters on our disks.
			Again, this same information can be gotten with alternate software, and NTFSInfo should have been a suggestion, not a requirement.
			Making this software a requirement goes against the university&apos;s mission of making education accessible and affordable.
			To complicate matters, the professor wouldn&apos;t write back when questioned about the assignments, which left me panicking for the entire week during the first of these two assignments, as I had no access to a Windows machine yet.
			Nowhere in the course description does it even mention needing to own a copy of Windows, so this left me hit with a surprise need for it; and again, that need was artificial, as the information the assignment called for didn&apos;t even actually need that software, except because it specifically said to use that specific software to get it.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			There were some hiccups with the course material.
			Most importantly, the course assignments were written to make use of the Codecademy website, but the Codecademy website has since been updated.
			*None* of the material used by this course is readily accessible from the Codecademy website&apos;s navigation.
			If you *do* happen to find the old learning units, they&apos;ve fallen into disrepair and don&apos;t function correctly.
			Thankfully, the professor in this course was very responsive and seemed to be able to smooth out the problems students were having.
			However, the assignments for this course seriously need to be updated to take into account the current state of Codecademy; either by using the new Codecademy units or by removing Codecademy from the assignments.
			Either option would suffice.
			Additionally, the assignment that used Wix to create a website seemed counterproductive.
			We learned nothing but drag-and-drop, and created websites that don&apos;t even actually function.
			Wix is a horrid platform, and we should be learning to use XHTML/HTML and CSS instead.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<p>
		I currently have no good options for archiving my discussion posts.
		The only place to archive them is here in my journal.
		That means future journal entries will likewise be redacted, this time before ever being posted.
		For now, my journal is going to have more holes in it than a colander.
		There&apos;s nothing I can do about that, and I apologise to any readers that are annoyed by this.
	</p>
	<p>
		I took a trip to the University of Oregon, where the testing centre I&apos;ll be taking my exams is located, to make sure I could find the correct place to be tomorrow.
		The place is horrid to try to navigate; it&apos;s a good thing I went tonight instead of waiting until when I need to take the exams.
		I was given the address of the building, but the university spans a multitude of buildings with differing addresses, most of which do not have their addresses on their faces.
		In fact, I could only find <strong>*one*</strong> address, and it was the wrong one.
		That told me what side of the street to be on, but without a second address, I couldn&apos;t even tell which direction to search in.
		In retrospect, I could have left the campus to get a second address; that would&apos;ve given me a way to get my bearings, even though I still would have little idea where the building was.
		I&apos;d planned to go during the day, but the threats from my own university left me too busy and too distracted to go until late.
		With how late it was, the administration buildings were closed, so I couldn&apos;t ask staff where to go.
		The few wandering students I asked didn&apos;t seem to know where to go.
		(There were tonnes of students wandering, but I only asked about three for directions.)
		To make matters worse, almost none of the buildings have meaningful labels; they&apos;re mostly named after people, not given names that tell what the buildings actually are.
		Eventually, I found a map, and located what I think is the right building.
		This building is one of the few that are properly labelled (though still without an address), but the name doesn&apos;t match what I&apos;ve been told.
		The location looks pretty close to that shown on a map I looked up online though, so this should be it.
		I&apos;ll go early, and I&apos;ll bring a book to pass the time.
		If there are issues and that&apos;s not the right place, hopefully there will be time to correct the problem.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="docmod">
	<h2>Document modifications</h2>
	<p>
		On <a href="/en/weblog/2017/11-November/02.xhtml">2017-11-02</a>, this journal page was modified in order to redact the name of the university.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
